Monthly Archives: October 2012

Snowed another four inches last night. We haven’t gone a day without the white stuff for almost two weeks now. After the drought we sure need moisture it whatever form nature grants it and there’s no doubt the plants will be well insulated going into winter…but yeesh!

Good time to look at more gardens I’d say.

After our delicious lunch I waddled my way to the last stop on our Progress Garden Tour…home of Brenda and Terry Fraser. Terry was a generous and informative host taking us on a grand tour which included a walk out to his impressive shelter belt featuring rows upon rows of thriving blue spruce, a peek inside his incredible man cave above the barn and hints on how he makes those spectacular petunia baskets that everyone has been ogling from the highway for years.

Let’s have a look…

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Petunias! The fence behind them isn’t for keeping animals in….it’s for keeping moose and deer out.

A beautiful grove of blue spruce trees along the driveway. Dumping rusty nails in the planting hole helps put the ‘blue’ in blue spruce.

This spruce sport is half green and half blue! Nature is both baffling and beautiful…

A beautiful island bed and chokecherry tree

More petunia baskets splash their wow factor across the front of the shop

Terry starts all his petunias from microscopic seeds. The baskets are watered every two to three days unless it’s windy and hot…then it’s a daily chore. Surprisingly he doesn’t use any fertilizer; just Sunshine Mix. It obviously works just fine!

A close up look at those beautiful baskets!

Spruce seedlings all potted up and ready for planting!

A perfectly planted shelterbelt of spruce trees a short walk behind the house. Sadly the PFRA is discontinuing this worthwhile program.

This one-of-a-kind barn loft is Terry’s Man Cave…designed to look like an old trapper’s cabin it has all the modern amenties as well including a big screen TV!

A glimse inside Terry’s Man Cave/Barn Loft!

Another peek at the man cave…loved the old wood cook stove. We used to have one just like it!

Like this:

The last three weeks have been spent enjoying the family home for Thanksgiving and madly dashing about buttoning down the farm for winter. Yesterday it was fall and this morning we awoke to winter. And still the snow comes tumbling down! I finished closing the bees inside their straw bale fort this morning and now I am listening to the clicks of the wood stove and waiting for the tea kettle to sing. It was a good summer, but now it’s time for the earth – and the people who tend it – to rest.

And it’s time to continue looking back at the beautiful gardens we saw this summer. Number 11 belongs to Sharon and Mickey Hustak and was also the location for the tea…and what a scrumptious tea it was! The salads and sandwiches were fantastic but the squares…oh my! I am ashamed to admit I had three…it was just too hard to choose between all the different kinds. Just when I finished one, someone would tell me I had to try another and how can you argue with that?

But enough about the gazillion delicious calories I guzzled. Let’s have a look at the garden instead…

This productive greenhouse was located in a handy spot next to the vegetable patch

What a great idea! This stainless steel sink attached to the greenhouse makes easy work of rinsing off vegetables before bringing them into the house.

Yes, those really are eggplants in the Peace! Sharon started the plant last year and then wintered it over in her basement, putting it back out in the greenhouse this spring. I have always ended up tossing my eggplants onto the compost in the fall in frustration. This year I brought my eggplant in from the deck and am looking forward to next year! It’s easy to forget that in warmer climates the eggplant is, after all, a perennial.

A great tire planting

Loved these containers made out of old chicken and pig feeders!

The view from Sharon and Mickey’s backyard was spectacular…and the perfectly painted wagon was pretty beautiful too!

This raised bed ran along the length of the house and was perfectly colour coded

Like this:

Here we are at the half way point of the garden tours. I have been having a blast looking over the photos and experiencing the gorgeous gardens all over again. I would like to thank all the gardeners who so generously open their gates to snoopers like me. I can only imagine the amount of work and stress that must go into getting your yard ‘Tour Worthy.” I was thinking instead of having to get your gardens in pristine condition, tours instead should hand out weed diggers as you go in and not let anyone out until they have pulled up 10 weeds each. Or whatever task the gardener might need done. Everyone could pack 10 rocks to the new rock garden etc. Many hands make light work and all that! Instead of having to cajole people into putting their gardens on the list, the tour organizers would have to beat them off with a hoe!

The 10th garden of the total 20 in the Fort St John, Dawson Creek and Progress tours we visited was pristine beyond belief. Bill and Marion Yerbury’s place held lots of gorgeous trees and shrubs, both new and established, as well as rock walls, an immaculate vegetable garden and oodles of bloomers. To top it all off the Kiskatinaw river was an easy stroll from the backyard along a wide, mown path through a gently sloping forest filled with wild flowers. Truly a Peace piece of Paradise.

Here we go…

An abundance of conifers hug the house not only looking great in the summer but also providing colour throughout our long winter months as well.

All this and a river too! An easy stroll from the back garden takes you along a wide, mown path down a gentle slope to the banks of the Kiskatinaw.

Thyme marks the boundary between the highway ditch and the start of the garden. It boggles the brain how much love and attention must go in to keeping it looking so tidy and neat.

Green, green, cedars against the house…

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

I loved all the rocks in the garden – and that is something I have noticed over and over…gardeners are as smitten with stones as they are with plants! I guess it’s all part of nature and that’s why we gravitate towards them. The edging in this garden was also stellar; here bricks line a curved bed. If you can run the mower over them it saves a lot of whippersnippering too!

Landscape timbers and a rock wall hold a delightful mixture of foliage while the red blossoms add just the right accent.

Isn’t that a welcoming entrance? I love the curves and the sun in the peak. Just beautiful.

A magazine worthy window box!

Loved this pairing of orange lilies and blue delphiniums in their bed against the greenhouse.